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An Introduction to the Mechanics of Bitcoin

khanacademy.org

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Re: An Introduction to the Mechanics of Bitcoin

#21

Post by alan_cx »

SagelyGuru wrote: post #19
sunnybythesea wrote: post #2

Gotta love online learning...no more waiting for information to be available in a text book and to enroll in classes to get educated.

Online learning, yes. However, what is wrong with writing? Why this youtube mania for making videos of everything? Not everyone wants to listen to hours of videos of some guy droning on about something that they could have read in a few minutes, with random access ability to concentrate on the few bits that they don't know. I am not saying that this guy does a bad job but, in general, I avoid videos like plague after…

What is wrong with writing?

Firstly, nothing. No one said there was.

Secondly, from what I can tell, writing is inferior to the human physical expression, which includes speech. It exists to mimic and preserve thought or speech. But it can never be precise, simply because the human body augments speech. When writing gets close to accurately doing that, it become verbose and tedious.

Or, to put it another way: Would your kids prefer to read or be read to? Would you prefer the lyrics or the song? The script or the movie? You might, most wouldn't.

Re: An Introduction to the Mechanics of Bitcoin

#23

Post by kang »

alan_cx wrote: post #21
SagelyGuru wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Online learning, yes. However, what is wrong with writing? Why this youtube mania for making videos of everything? Not everyone wants to listen to hours of videos of some guy droning on about something that they could have read in a few minutes, with random access ability to concentrate on the few bits that they don't know. I am not saying that this guy does a bad job but, in general, I avoid videos like plague after…

What is wrong with writing? Firstly, nothing. No one said there was. Secondly, from what I can tell, writing is inferior to the human physical expression, which includes speech. It exists to mimic and preserve thought or speech. But it can never be precise, simply because the human body augments speech. When writing gets close to accurately doing that, it become verbose and tedious. Or, to put it another way: Would y…

Writing is not inferior when it hosts a subject being studied. To quote your example, yes, lyrics would be preferred to a song if the meaning is being studied, script would be prefered to movie if dialogues are being studied.

Atleast in the current context, books are faster to reread compared to rewinding a video, which can break your flow.

Re: An Introduction to the Mechanics of Bitcoin

#24

Post by Lerc »

joshuak wrote: post #16

As a cypherpunk, when I first heard of bitcoin I was incredulous. But after many months of research and experimentation I became satisfied that the bitcoin protocols don't have any obvious flaws. God how I wish I could have saved some of that time with a nice summery video. However, far more importantly then bitcoin I want to know why the hell we don't have proof of work as an email spam filter yet!!!!!!

Given that in the long term the cost of mining bitcoin is in the ballpark of the electricity cost of the proof-of-work (in that being cheaper encourages more people to mine and more expensive means mining would run a loss). You could effectively outsource the cost of the proof of work by having bitcoin validated email. Send a fraction of a bitcoin with an email to let it past.

If email clients maintained the wallets you wouldn't need to even worry about the cost if you had a balance of in/out mail. You could still white list anyone you want to email for free. A cost of $0.001 per message would have very little impact on regular users. A botnet would still need to get the funds somewhere to bulk send, if they cracked the mail programs internal wallet they could drain that and send a small number of emails, but beyond that they'd need funds, and quite frankly if they could get at the wallets they'd just take the money direct.

It raises an interesting question. what is the value to a spammer of an individual email? The return from advertising/scams/phishing/whatever divided by the number of emails sent. It's got to be tiny.

Re: An Introduction to the Mechanics of Bitcoin

#25

Post by rmc »

joshuak wrote: post #16

As a cypherpunk, when I first heard of bitcoin I was incredulous. But after many months of research and experimentation I became satisfied that the bitcoin protocols don't have any obvious flaws. God how I wish I could have saved some of that time with a nice summery video. However, far more importantly then bitcoin I want to know why the hell we don't have proof of work as an email spam filter yet!!!!!!

However, far more importantly then bitcoin I want to know why the hell we don't have proof of work as an email spam filter yet!!!!!!

Because it's not very useful until nearly everyone supports it.

If a non-trivial amount of people don't implement it (which is highly likely when it's first released), then you have to accept non-proof-of-work-emails, or you'll miss the emails. That is the hole in the system that spam will get in through. So why bother supporting it yourself if it won't stop spam?

Re: An Introduction to the Mechanics of Bitcoin

#26

Post by jiggy2011 »

Lerc wrote: post #24
joshuak wrote: post #16

As a cypherpunk, when I first heard of bitcoin I was incredulous. But after many months of research and experimentation I became satisfied that the bitcoin protocols don't have any obvious flaws. God how I wish I could have saved some of that time with a nice summery video. However, far more importantly then bitcoin I want to know why the hell we don't have proof of work as an email spam filter yet!!!!!!

Given that in the long term the cost of mining bitcoin is in the ballpark of the electricity cost of the proof-of-work (in that being cheaper encourages more people to mine and more expensive means mining would run a loss). You could effectively outsource the cost of the proof of work by having bitcoin validated email. Send a fraction of a bitcoin with an email to let it past. If email clients maintained the wallets…

This would incentivise spammers to get people to send emails to them, they could probably do this by signing up lots of fake accounts to services that send registration emails.

Re: An Introduction to the Mechanics of Bitcoin

#27

Post by jiggy2011 »

alan_cx wrote: post #21
SagelyGuru wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Online learning, yes. However, what is wrong with writing? Why this youtube mania for making videos of everything? Not everyone wants to listen to hours of videos of some guy droning on about something that they could have read in a few minutes, with random access ability to concentrate on the few bits that they don't know. I am not saying that this guy does a bad job but, in general, I avoid videos like plague after…

What is wrong with writing? Firstly, nothing. No one said there was. Secondly, from what I can tell, writing is inferior to the human physical expression, which includes speech. It exists to mimic and preserve thought or speech. But it can never be precise, simply because the human body augments speech. When writing gets close to accurately doing that, it become verbose and tedious. Or, to put it another way: Would y…

They're just different I guess. Writing is easier to skim, I can scan a 1000 word article in a few seconds to tell if it's likely worth my time to read. I can't do that easily with a 10 minute video. It's also easier to edit.

OTOH speech conveys emotion better and feels like it has less mental overhead to consume and produce. I know a few people who are excellent speakers but very poor writers for example.

Re: An Introduction to the Mechanics of Bitcoin

#29

Post by fintler »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #28

Has anybody successfully explained bitcoin to a layman? I have a feeling this video would completely lose my mother.

I doubt it would be generally successful as a layman's explanation, but here's my attempt.

http://www.bringhurst.org/2013/04/03/how-does-bitcoin-crypto...

Re: An Introduction to the Mechanics of Bitcoin

#30

Post by pronoiac »

Lerc wrote: post #24
joshuak wrote: post #16

As a cypherpunk, when I first heard of bitcoin I was incredulous. But after many months of research and experimentation I became satisfied that the bitcoin protocols don't have any obvious flaws. God how I wish I could have saved some of that time with a nice summery video. However, far more importantly then bitcoin I want to know why the hell we don't have proof of work as an email spam filter yet!!!!!!

Given that in the long term the cost of mining bitcoin is in the ballpark of the electricity cost of the proof-of-work (in that being cheaper encourages more people to mine and more expensive means mining would run a loss). You could effectively outsource the cost of the proof of work by having bitcoin validated email. Send a fraction of a bitcoin with an email to let it past. If email clients maintained the wallets…

> A cost of $0.001 per message would have very little impact on regular users.

I wonder about mailing lists - a couple of thousand members isn't too big a list, but $1 a message adds up. Who pays it? What keeps someone from adding fake accounts to run up the costs of lists they dislike?

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